Hey, is Campbell County, Tennessee always this hot in summer? I am not sure but the temperature inside certain parts of Campbell County Animal Center reached 91 degrees Farenheit on Wednesday and as consequence it was intolerable and perhaps life threatening for the animals. The reason? One of the air con units broke down on July 11th.
“It is too hot to have the animals in windowless rooms with not air circulating…If you have..large fans or portable a/c units that you wish to donate to the shelter please let us know….”

Knox News reports that on 12th July that some dogs and cats had been fostered to get them out of the building but 72 cats and 45 dogs remained at the swelteringly hot facility. Thirty are being housed at the Tennessee Valley Humane Society. Other animals have been removed from the building and are stacked in their crates in parts of the building where the air con works which is in the lobby, bathroom and the admin office.
To compound the crisis the shelter is over capacity anyway. The shelter limit is 130 but at present there are 170 animals ‘on their books’. They had ‘record breaking intakes’ in June and July (486 animals).
July the 4th and the aftermath is a day when the intake goes up. The fireworks cause pets to scram and become temporarily homeless.
The new a/c unit will take a week to install. It’s been ordered but the staff and animals will have to be patient. Posting on Facebook the shelter state that the new unit will arrive in 5-10 days (from last Wednesday). They said that they had to get the animals out of the building. Air con is a matter of life and death sometimes.
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I leave mine on while at work at a comfortable 72 and the cats have access to a cat door to the back of the house where there are windows open for fresh air.
It’s inhumane to have those animals in that shelter under those conditions. In act it is outright abuse. They should be put in mobile cages under a tent with cooling fans until the unit is in. How the hell do you tell a suffocating cat to be patient ?
In the US Micheal almost every city and county have emergency shelter for displaces animals due to flood and wildfires. Most county fair grounds have at least one air conditioned building for exhibits etc.
I hope they can get their A/C situation solved quickly. The summer here in the USA has been extraordinarily hot and humid. Here in the Boston area (Massachusetts), we’ve had temps in the 80s-high 90s (F) for weeks! We had a couple days of relief with huge rainstorms and a day or two of 70-degree (F) weather, but tomorrow it begins again.
Our shelter’s A/C went out in the main area last week. Many volunteers fostered cats and dogs in their own homes. For those that had to stay, we had several fans in strategic areas to keep the air circulating. The administration office A/C was working, so cats with health issues or seniors were kept in the office. Kittens are already in foster homes, so they weren’t impacted.
We are fortunate in that the city owns the building and maintains it, so they had a crew here and within a few days, the A/C was repaired. Animal Control has their office in the shelter, so they were able to monitor the situation.
This story is very telling. When the A/C is on, the temp in here on a hot summer day is roughly 68 degrees. Without the A/C, the temp shot up to 130-degrees! The dogs that had to stay here were given constant wet towels on their bodies and we have baby pools in the side yard with very cold water that they enjoyed. The cats had ice cubes floating in their water dishes that they loved. Some of the smaller cats even tried sitting in their dishes, lol!